The Nation and the Constitution: An Oration Delivered Before the City Authorities and Citizens of Providence, July 4, 1866 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Nation and the Constitution: An Oration Delivered Before the City Authorities and Citizens of Providence, July 4, 1866

It is, then, no disparagenient of the good and wise who have gone before us, to claim that we have been brought to a deeper perception of the foundations of our nationality, and to a more correct interpretation of those great ideas which are incorporated into our body politic. There are things which experience alone can teach, and doubly sad would seem our bitter sacrifices Should they leave us no compensating lessons. Against our will the appeal to arms was made, and in the unerring course of that righteous Providence which holds nations not less than men to an account, they that imagined a vain thing were ruled with a rod of iron and dashed in pieces like a potter's vessel. But'in such a political system as ours, the sword can never be the final arbiter. It flashes from its scabbard at the bidding of ideas. The mutual recognition, by the mass of the people, of fundamental principles of policy, is the only safeguard of public peace. The foundaticn of government, said one of the fathers of the Republic, is some principle or passion in the minds of the people.

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